JEFF EDELSTEIN: The cicadas are (not) coming to Trenton, Princeton, or anywhere around here

Saturday, April 13, 2013

The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming!

By now, you’ve probably heard the big, loud news about the return of the cicada, the big, loud bug that lives for 17 years underground, then rises up from the dirt and makes some ridiculously loud buzzing sounds for a month while it mates, and then drops dead. (Not making any of that up.)

Exciting stuff, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Except ... the cicadas are not coming. At least not to the Greater Trenton area.

“If you want to see cicadas, you’re going to have to go to Bergen or Passaic county,” said Barbara Bromley, the Mercer County horticulturist. “I keep hearing on the news about how we’re going to see them here and all over New Jersey, but we’re not, and people who are expecting to see them are going to be disappointed.”

Bromley said this batch of cicadas are known as “Brood II,” and we simply don’t have them here. Greater Trenton gets two types of cicadas, one being the so-called “dog day” cicadas, which hatch up from the ground every five years sometime in July. (We get them every year, as the cycles of the individual cicadas vary.)

But the other cicadas we get? Well, that’s the dangerous-sounding Brood X. Those, like their Brood II brethren, are also of the once-every-17-years variety, and they rival Brood II in scope and volume.

Around these parts, one might mistake the Brood X cicada as an upper crust insect with a stiff upper lip, as they appear in Princeton and virtually nowhere else.

“That’s because Princeton has had the least development in the area,” Bromley said. “Mostly because the town was developed so long ago. Plus, cicadas rarely travel more than 300 feet from where they come up through the ground.”

Bromley said any construction would kill the cicadas while they lived underground, as the insects spend those 17 years belowdecks feeding on tree roots. Princeton has some old trees, and so when they pop — like they did back in 2004 — it’s quite a scene. I remember writing about it back then, going to Nassau Street to talk to people about the invasion. The bugs were so loud it was legitimately difficult to have a conversation outside.

The Princeton cicada invasion — which will happen again in 2021 around this time of year, mark your calendars — also serves as the basis of Bob Dylan’s song, “Day of the Locusts.” (Cicadas are not locusts. But before people knew what cicadas were, and seeing as they only came around every 17 years, and allowing for the fact people in the 17th and 18th centuries were still settling much of America, you could forgive those people for thinking a Biblical plague had befallen them. Anyway ...)

Anyway, Dylan was in Princeton in 1970 to receive an honorary degree during graduation ceremonies. He was “very nervous and hesitant about the whole thing and seemed ‘appropriately out of place,’ during the ceremonies,” according to a Rolling Stone article about the day.

Well, it’s possible he felt nervous and hesitant because the town was under cicada attack, and the song he wrote — unlike many of his ditties — was clear as glass about the topic at hand. No need to have an advanced degree in Dylanology to see the meaning in the song.

As I stepped to the stage to pick up my degree,

And the locusts sang off in the distance.

Yeah the locusts sang such a sweet melody.

See what I mean?Anyway, the cicadas aren’t coming to Princeton or Trenton, Lawrence or Hopewell this year. We don’t do Brood II. Don’t believe the cicada hype. But just wait. They’ll be back. Oh, they’ll be back. And maybe we can get Dylan to stop by for a little 51-year reunion.